1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network device, an information processing apparatus, a control method of the same and a recording medium for the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a public attention has been paid to well known communication standards such as universal plug and play (UPnP) in which a plurality of devices and information home electric appliances are connected to each other via a home network to share content data relating to still images, moving images and sound. These devices and information home electric appliances have a function of, when they are not in use in a certain period of time, being automatically turned into a power-off state or a sleep mode from viewpoints of energy saving. Further, these devices and information home electric appliances have a function of receiving an activation request via a network when they are in the power-off state or in the sleep mode, which is referred to as a wakeup-on-LAN function.
Accordingly, a user wants to utilize services provided by the network device by starting up the network device such as the above-described device and home information electric appliance in the power-off state or in the sleep mode, connected to a home network from remote places.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-175625 discusses a technique for storing a media access control (MAC) address which an activation request terminal operated by a user acquires from the network device and, when the user utilizes the service, selecting the MAC address of the network device that the user intends to activate.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-205267 discusses another technique in which an activation request terminal acquires in advance a time required for an application of a network device to turn into a stabilized state after the power is turned on and instructs the application to power on the network device prior to a reserved control startup time.
However, although, according to the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-175625, the activation request terminal transmits the activation request to the network device, how long it will take until the network device is started cannot be known. Thus, in the technique according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-175625, it is necessary to monitor an activation completion message dispatched from the network device in a period until the network device is started and becomes capable of performing control. Because retrieval throughout the network needs to be repeated until a target network device is found out, if the network device fails to be started, the monitoring or retrieval is continued in vain, which is a problem to be solved.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-205267, by acquiring an activation time of the network device in advance, a time when the network device becomes capable of performing control after transmitting the activation request can be grasped.
However, a case can be assumed that the network device does not receive an activation request packet for the reason that the network device is not connected to the network. Further, it can be assumed that even if the network device succeeds to receive the activation request packet, the network device may fail to activate the application for some reason.
In such a case, according to the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-205267, the activation request terminal cannot determine whether the activation of the network device fails or not.